Preaching for pennies.

So this article by Cringely is a good read and finally prompted me to finish this article that I’ve been meaning to write after receiving a response from Senator Schumer about the PROTECT IP Act (more on this later).

A lot of people see and recognize the problem [of having no new frontier] but few have a solution. Personally, I think the US is partially fucked because the frontier that we could have gone into (or rather, should be currently exploring), the internet, has been blocked off by nonsense patent laws (why do you think this We The People petition is so popular – Direct Patent Office to Stop Issuing Software Patents), insane copyright/trademark issues, and overall government corruption that caters to lobbyists pushing for stronger “IP” laws in both the US and other countries. And no, that is not hyperbole. I really do mean the US government is corrupt in the sense that they cater to lobbyists. Of course people always suspected the power of lobbyists but it wasn’t until Wikileaks came about that these sources of corruption have become so public and have been revealed in a timely (meaning the issues are still relevant) manner.

Specifically for the topic at hand (IP laws), Wikileaks has shown that the US gov’t has strong armed some countries into implementing stronger DMCA laws and other IP related changes (e.g., Wikileaks Cables Show Massive U.S. Effort to Establish Canadian DMCA). Case in point: ACTA (signed by the US very recently) and PROTECT IP – both of which are horrible for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Hence why most promising startups are moving away from the US and the trend is happening faster than I predicted because of these idiotic laws/lawsuits. But do our representatives listen to us? Do they see the downward trend in the industry and realize why it is happening (the developers, myself being one, state it quite clearly)? I’d venture to say no because this is the scripted response I got from Senator Schumer when he replied to my email several months after Protect IP went to vote (sent in at the same time I wrote my article on PROTECT IP):

Dear —–:

Thank you for your contacting me in opposition to S.968, the PROTECT IP Act. Like you, I believe that consumers should have access to a vibrant and innovative online community to discuss their ideas and opinions. At the same time, we must not let the internet become a haven for intellectual property thieves.

The threat to intellectual property owners over the internet is clear. Every year, the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that copyright theft costs our nation about $58 billion in lost output, 373,375 in lost jobs, and $16 billion in lost employee earnings. These numbers present an unacceptable burden to US businesses. In addition, companies may be less likely to innovate because their products may be stolen by intellectual property pirates, creating a drag on the US economy.

The PROTECT IP Act addresses the problem of intellectual property theft online, but it also contains important due process protections to ensure that legal activity over the internet is not disrupted. As you may know, the PROTECT IP Act would allow the Department of Justice to file a claim against a website that 1) has no significant purpose other than engaging in or facilitating copyright infringement, circumventing technology controlling access to copyrighted works, or selling or promoting counterfeit goods or services; or (2) is designed, operated, or marketed and used to engage in such activities. A judge would have to find that a website is intentionally violating intellectual property rights of an American entity before he could issue an order against that site. I believe PROTECT IP Act would provide law enforcement and intellectual property holders additional tools to protect American intellectual property from websites while still ensuring the constitutionally protected rights of free speech and due process. The PROTECT IP Act currently is awaiting action on the floor of the Senate, and I will continue to monitor this bill as it moves through the Senate.

Thank you for contacting me on this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can ever be of assistance to you on this, or any other matter.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer United States Senator

Please do not respond to this email. To send another message please visit my website at http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm . Thank you.

Ouch! Talk about being paid off to spew shit that he doesn’t know anything about. The original mail I wrote to him was similar to my old post on PROTECT IP except without the profanity and stripped down to the most important factual points. His response doesn’t address a single argument I put forth and relies on “statistics” that were created by lobbyists strictly to push their own agenda. If you read the actual source of those numbers (here you go for your reading pleasure), you will see that they are based on very poor premises such as (and I’m only posting a few):

Some of their inane premises, specifically:

1. Internal estimates of piracy losses compiled by each of the copyright industries. 2. Conﬁdential estimates of piracy losses developed by others on behalf of individual copyright industries. … 4. Sales data by country and physical piracy rates for recorded music from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Seriously? Would you trust a study that uses non-biased data AND data whose methodology for being produced isn’t even revealed? It’s like writing your thesis without a bibliography and claiming yourself to be an unbiased expert in the field. Yeah, I think my professors would have flunked me if I tried pulling that on them.

Every download = 1 lost sale. Yeah… sure. You wish. There isn’t a single economist that believes that to be the case. There are so many reasons that this cannot be true, it’s mind boggling to see them use this assumption (e.g., some of these people don’t even have the disposable income, some wouldn’t even bother looking at media X because the cost is greater than their desire to check it out, etc.)

The double counting of losses using multipliers, taxes (counted in multiple ways), and the icing – employees’ lost earnings. Yeah right, like they would hire more people or give raises if piracy suddenly disappeared. Production of new works wouldn’t suddenly require more people nor would they suddenly start producing additional works – and this is giving the kind assumption that they produce things which they don’t because the RIAA, etc. are just representatives for production companies. The industries themselves, specifically the artists, see very little of the money that is collected. And that isn’t even accounting for how little money the RIAA, etc. seems to get.)

Being an optimist, I thought that my well thought out letter would have elicited a better response. It saddens me to see the direction my nation is going and worse yet, the time I take to read and understand these issues is probably 100 times more than the amount of time Senator Schumer puts into understanding these issues. This is disappointing on two levels:

Senator Schumer is our representative and it is his duty to do what is best for America. I have yet to see a good argument as to how this would benefit anyone other than the richest people in the US.

As someone who is fairly well read in this field (I’m primarily a web developer so this is a crucial part of my industry), I would assume Senator Schumer would need to put in a lot more effort to understand the nuances of these issues to fully comprehend the effects that will result from pushing for things like PROTECT IP.

I know our Representatives can’t possible dedicate time to all issues, but they shouldn’t allow themselves to be spoon fed complete bullshit from lobbyists. Our Representatives can always abstain from voting on an issue that they are not knowledgeable in. It would show better judgement (patience is a virtue after all, so take your time to do your due diligence), result in fewer knee jerk decisions, and perhaps (yes, remember I’m an optimist) allow for more sensible laws. So Senator Schumer, I put in my time, how about you put in some of yours?

Some of you may have heard of the PROTECT IP Act (link provided to the latest draft that I know of – 5/19/2011) and how some big corporations (RIAA vs Google) have been duking it out over whether this bill should be legalized. Now most common folk aren’t going to understand much about what this bill means so I’ll try to point you towards sources that break the bill down into layman’s terms. First off, the PROTECT IP Act is the successor to the failed COICA bill (which can be seen as the US version of ACTA), both of which were introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. If you want to read about why ACTA and COICA failed, be my guest. There are tons of articles out there discussing how horrid those bills are and why they should not pass. I would like to talk about the PROTECT IP Act and how it is a sign of America’s downfall.

First off, straight from the bill itself, is the soul and purpose of the bill:

To prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes.

For now, I’m going to ignore the “and for other purposes” part since that is so goddamn vague (Honestly? “other purposes?”.) Instead, we shall talk about the lofty goals of this bill and why it is being pushed. Big corporations like the RIAA, MPAA, etc. have lobbied the government to push for laws that will help them protect their intellectual property from things like piracy and… well yeah, the big thing is piracy (torrents, file sharing, etc.). Protecting their works of art is fine but why use such generic language? If this quote is truly the goal of the bill, then it should allow all rightsholders, those controlled by big corporations (a la the RIAA), and individuals, like indie bands, bloggers, freelance artists, etc., to be able to protect their creative works from theft. I mean, that is the goal right?

Wrong.

If you read through the bill, it immediately becomes clear that this bill is meant to stop rogue websites that promote piracy per the bill’s definition. Of course what they don’t tell you is that the bill’s definition is sufficiently broad enough to encompass search engines–Google, Bing, Yahoo, as well. Now you’d think, “Hey this will help individuals like us right?” Well yes and no.

After doing “due diligence” in contacting said website, you’d have to go to the courts and wait for them to approve your notice for take down. Great… except for the court fees, legal documents, and the fact that being an individual means you’d have to wait for the court to get to your file. Once that happens, you better hope you don’t get taken to court as there is nothing in the bill to protect you from having to fight your way through a lengthy court battle that you probably can’t pay for. The amount of legal crap rightsholders will have to go through, while justified as being required, is completely unfeasible for individuals.

The true goal of this bill is that it allows “qualifying plaintiffs” that have either money or power to push their agenda through without having to wait. Obviously big corporations like the RIAA get a huge edge here but the real concern is that Attorney Generals have also been given the same rights as rightsholders. Weird because their position allows them to bypass any sort of waiting period and the worst part: there is no language specifying who the Attorney Generals represent. They aren’t directly representing any specific rightsholders, and they can use the power granted by this bill to just take down websites based on what they believe to be “theft.” This is essentially no different than what is happening with the Department of Homeland Security and the ICE take downs which have already hit many innocent websites to which the DHS has already fessed up.

So America is doomed.

The government is trying to push a law that:

Allows Attorney Generals to immediately take down any website they want based on what they perceive to be theft. Theft being anything they think infringes on some form of intellectual property.

Allows big corporations (RIAA, MPAA, newspapers, etc.) to take down any websites they believe infringe on their rights. If the take down was done in bad faith? You’d have to prove it before getting your site back in a lengthy court battle that you surely cannot afford. Goodbye bloggers.

Allows individual rightsholders from not being able to do the reverse and barely helping them from stopping people from pirating their works. Is a newspaper copying your blog? Well too fucking bad. All they have to do is respond to your request to remove the infringing material and then do nothing about it because taking them to court over what constitutes “due diligence” is not something you can afford.

In what way does this help individual rightsholders? In the end, all this does is give the government more power to silence free speech (yes, you are right Google and thank you for not sugar coating the situation) and further enhance the power of big corporations. This will hurt you, me, and every goddamn person who makes the foundation of this country. If you want to fight back, now is the time because once this bill passes, there is no fucking thing you can do to stop the government as they are giving themselves immunity (quoted from the bill):

(B) IMMUNITY FROM LIABILITY.—Any en-20 tity receiving an order under this subsection, 21 and any director, officer, employee, or agent 22 thereof, shall not be liable to any party for any 23 acts reasonably designed to comply with this 24 subsection or reasonably arising from such 25 order, other than in an action pursuant to sub-13 GRA11400 S.L.C. 1 section (e), and any actions taken by customers 2 of such entity to circumvent any restriction on 3 access to the Internet domain instituted pursu-4 ant to this subsection or any act, failure, or in-5 ability to restrict access to an Internet domain 6 that is the subject of a court order issued pur-7 suant to this subsection despite good faith ef-8 forts to do so by such entity shall not be used 9 by any person in any claim or cause of action 10 against such entity, other than in an action 11 pursuant to subsection (e).

Of course, the media is so focused on the big names fighting over this bill that no one is bothering to listen to individuals. Distracting language is being used to draw attention away from how this bill does jack shit for the rest of us. Isn’t it a fun time to be an American? Even if we try to fight for our rights, no one is listening anyway. It’s like they’re already gone.